Markets ended flat on Thursday, amid a range bound session, following the expiry of April futures and options series.

The 30-share Sensex provisionally ended down 32 points at 17,119 and the 50-share Nifty ended down 10 points at 5,192.

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(Updated at 14:26 hrs)

Markets continued to trade flat in late noon trades ahead of the F&O expiry for the April series. The Sensex was down 5 points at 17,146 and the Nifty was down 5 points at 5,196.

On the global front, Asian markets are trading flat with a positive bias with the exception Shanghai Composite which ended slightly down. European shares were trading marginally higher in early trades. The CAC-40, DAX and FTSE-100 were trading mixed.

Back home, near-month Nifty futures contracts was trading at 5,192, a slight discount to the spot market ahead of their expiry today.

On the sectoral front, BSE Metal and IT indices are the top gainers while Auto and PSU and Power indices are down nearly 0.6% each.

Among Sensex shares, Infosys was up 0.7% while TCS gained 1%. In the metal space Jindal Steel was up 3.7% at Rs 496 and Tata Steel was up 1.2% at Rs 472.

In the auto segment, two-wheeler majors Bajaj Auto and Hero MotoCorp were both down 3% each.

Meanwhile, Asian Paints and Bank of Baroda both up nearly 1% each ahead of their inclusion in the 50-share Nifty index from Friday. Further, Reliance Communications was down 1.4% and Reliance Power was down 0.3% as both scrips will be excluded from the Nifty.

Among other shares United Phosphorous was down 5% after the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has levied a penalty of Rs 252.44 crore on United Phosphorus for discrepancies in bidding in a tender of Food Corporation of India (FCI) and collective boycott of another tender of FCI.

The market breadth on the BSE was negative with 1,454 losers and 1,091 gainers.